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63 ChAPter 3 The holy spirit and a sense for the faith since faith is the reception of revelation, at the heart of the nature of the church as a community of reception is its nature as a community of faith. faith is a gift of the holy spirit which has two fundamental dimensions : faith as believing, i.e., as a personal response to God’s loving initiative (fides qua creditur), and faith as beliefs and assent to beliefs, i.e., as an affirmative response to the content of what has been revealed (fides quae creditur). as the principle of reception, the holy spirit is at work in both these dimensions of faith’s reception of revelation. Without wishing to reduce faith to intellectual knowledge, in this chapter we will begin to examine more closely the cognitive dimension of faith in terms of understanding, interpreting, and applying to daily life one’s relationship to God and the beliefs one professes. here we begin to address more specifically the spirit’s activity through the sensus fidei, by proposing a pneumatological approach to faith’s understanding of revelation which is consistent with the trinitarian theology of revelation and consequent ecclesiology outlined in the previous two chapters. fAIth’S orgAN o N f o r uN Der S tANDINg in the first chapter, we examined the early church’s experience of the holy spirit as the one who enabled them to appropriate Jesus Christ and 64 T H E P R I NC I P LE the salvific revelation he offered. Within that empowerment to live the Christ-life was experienced an ability to understand the sense of what was being given. as the texts cited in the first chapter demonstrate, the new Testament, without using the actual phrase sensus fidei, alludes to a capacity for perceiving the faith that comes from the holy spirit. “an effort to base the sensus fidei theologically finds in the new Testament clear testimonials to the reality of an organ of faith and its understanding , the work of the spirit, in each of the baptized, as well as in the entire church.”1 Through this “organ of faith and its understanding,” the holy spirit enables believers to comprehend and make their own God’s salvific offer. We have seen how the fourth evangelist, for example, speaks of another advocate who would anoint the disciples and lead them to the fullness of truth.2 indeed, because of that anointing, they have no need of any other teacher.3 in Colossians, we read of the gift of “spiritual insight.”4 The writer of the letter to the ephesians prays that his community may have a capacity to perceive revelation.5 herbert Vorgrimler notes that the new Testament witness regarding access to knowledge of the faith nowhere envisages any gradation in the knowledge received: The biblical witness to faith’s post-easter reflection, put briefly, is this: the spirit of God creates faith, vitalises it in diverse ways and produces tangible “fruits of the spirit.” There is no mention of any privileges in the knowledge of faith, as if some receive a special, personal source of knowledge, or a better, greater or deeper knowledge than others. They do not, because of their positions or functions in and for the community, have at their disposal a kind of secret lore. early Christianity resisted the temptation (from Gnosticism) towards the elite and the esoteric. But 1. Pié-ninot, “Sensus Fidei,” 923. my italics. 2. see Jn 14:26: “But the advocate, the holy spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that i have said to you.” see also Jn 16:12–14: “i still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. he will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. all that the father has is mine. for this reason i said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” 3. 1 Jn 2:27. 4. Col 1:9. 5. eph 1:17–19: “may the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception...

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